Delphi Works of Robert E. Howard (Illustrated) (Series Four)

by Robert E. Howard

  We tore through Chawed Ear in a fog of dust and the women and chillern which had ventured out of their shacks squalled and run back again, though they warn’t in no danger. But Chawed Ear folks is pecooliar that way.

  When we was out of sight of Chawed Ear I give the lines to Bill and swung down on the side of the stage and stuck my head in. They was one of the purtiest gals I ever seen in there, all huddled up in a corner and looking so pale and scairt I was afraid she was going to faint, which I’d heard Eastern gals has a habit of doing.

  “Oh, spare me!” she begged. “Please don’t scalp me!”

  “Be at ease, Miss Devon,” I reassured her. “I ain’t no Injun, nor no wild man neither. Neither is my friends here. We wouldn’t none of us hurt a flea. We’re that refined and soft-hearted you wouldn’t believe it—” At that instant a wheel hit a stump and the stage jumped into the air and I bit my tongue and roared in some irritation, “Bill, you condemned son of a striped polecat, stop this stage before I comes up there and breaks yore cussed neck!”

  “Try, you beef headed lummox,” he invites, but he pulled up the hosses and I taken off my hat and opened the door. Bill and Joshua clumb down and peered over my shoulder. Miss Devon looked tolerable sick. Maybe it was something she et.

  “Miss Devon,” I says, “I begs yore pardon for this here informal welcome. But you sees before you a man whose heart bleeds for the benighted state of his native community. I’m Breckinridge Elkins, of Bear Creek, where hearts is pure and motives is lofty, but culture is weak.

  “You sees before you,” says I, growing more enthusiastic about education the longer I looked at them big brown eyes of her’n, “a man which has growed up in ignorance. I cain’t neither read nor write. Joshua here, in the painter skin, he cain’t neither, and neither can Bill”

  “That’s a lie,” says Bill. “I can read and — ooomp!” I’d kind of stuck my elbow in his stummick. I didn’t want him to spile the effeck of my speech. Miss Devon was gitting some of her color back.

  “Miss Devon,” I says, “will you please ma’m come up to Bear Creek and be our schoolteacher?”

  “Why,” says she bewilderedly, “I came West expecting to teach at Chawed Ear, but I haven’t signed any contract, and—”

  “How much was them snake-hunters goin’ to pay you?” I ast.

  “Ninety dollars a month,” says she.

  “We pays you a hundred,” I says. “Board and lodgin’ free.”

  “Hell’s fire,” says Bill. “They never was that much hard cash money on Bear Creek.”

  “We all donates coon hides and corn licker,” I snapped. “I sells the stuff in War Paint and hands the dough to Miss Devon. Will you keep yore snout out of my business.”

  “But what will the people of Chewed Ear say?” she wonders.

  “Nothin’,” I told her heartily. “I’ll tend to them!”

  “It seems so strange and irregular,” says she weakly. “I don’t know.”

  “Then it’s all settled!” I says. “Great! Le’s go!”

  “Where?” she gasped, grabbing holt of the stage as I clumb onto the seat.

  “Bear Creek!” I says. “Varmints and hoss-thieves, hunt the bresh! Culture is on her way to Bear Creek!” And we went fogging it down the road as fast as the hosses could hump it. Onst I looked back at Miss Devon and seen her getting pale again, so I yelled above the clatter of the wheels, “Don’t be scairt, Miss Devon! Ain’t nothin’ goin’ to hurt you. B. Elkins is on the job to perteck you, and I aim to be at yore side from now on!”

  At this she said something I didn’t understand. In fack, it sounded like a low moan. And then I heard Joshua say to Bill, hollering to make hisself heard, “Eddication my eye! The big chump’s lookin’ for a wife, that’s what! Ten to one she gives him the mitten!”

  “I takes that,” bawled Bill, and I bellered, “Shet up that noise! Quit discussin’ my private business so dern public! I — what’s that?”

  It sounded like firecrackers popping back down the road. Bill yelled, “Holy smoke, it’s them Chawed Ear maniacs! They’re still on our trail and they’re gainin’ on us!”

  Cussing heartily I poured leather into them fool hosses, and jest then we hit the mouth of the Bear Creek trail and I swung into it. They’d never been a wheel on that trail before, and the going was tolerable rough. It was all Bill and Joshua could do to keep from gitting throwed off, and they was seldom more’n one wheel on the ground at a time. Naturally the mob gained on us and when we roared up into Bowie Knife Pass they warn’t more’n a quarter mile behind us, whooping bodacious.

  I pulled up the hosses beside the tree where Jack Sprague was still tied up to. He gawped at Miss Devon and she gawped back at him.

  “Listen,” I says, “here’s a lady in distress which we’re rescuin’ from teachin’ school in Chawed Ear. A mob’s right behind us. This ain’t no time to think about yoreself. Will you postpone yore sooicide if I turn you loose, and git onto this stage and take the young lady up the trail whilst the rest of us turns back the mob?”

  “I will!” says he with more enthusiasm than he’d showed since we stopped him from hanging hisself. So I cut him loose and he clumb onto the stage.

  “Drive on to Kiowa Canyon,” I told him as he picked up the lines. “Wait for us there. Don’t be scairt, Miss Devon! I’ll soon be with you! B. Elkins never fails a lady fair!”

  “Gup!” says Jack, and the stage went clattering and banging up the trail and me and Joshua and Bill taken cover amongst the big rocks that was on each side of the trail. The pass was jest a narrer gorge, and a lovely place for a ambush as I remarked.

  Well, here they come howling up the steep slope yelling and spurring and shooting wild, and me and Bill give ’em a salute with our pistols. The charge halted plumb sudden. They knowed they was licked. They couldn’t git at us because they couldn’t climb the cliffs. So after firing a volley which damaged nothing but the atmosphere, they turnt around and hightailed it back towards Chawed Ear.

  “I hope that’s a lesson to ‘em,” says I as I riz. “Come! I cain’t wait to git culture started on Bear Creek!”

  “You cain’t wait to git to sparkin’ that gal,” snorted Joshua. But I ignored him and forked Cap’n Kidd and headed up the trail, and him and Bill follered, riding double on Jack Sprague’s hoss.

  “Why should I deny my honorable intentions?” I says presently. “Anybody can see Miss Devon is already learnin’ to love me! If Jack had my attraction for the fair sex, he wouldn’t be luggin’ around a ruint life. Hey, where’s the stage?” Because we’d reched Kiowa Canyon and they warn’t no stage.

  “Here’s a note stuck on a tree,” says Bill. “I’ll read it — well, for Lord’s sake!” he yelped, “Lissen to this:

  “‘Dere boys: I’ve desided I ain’t going to hang myself, and Miss Devon has desided she don’t want to teach school at Bear Creek. Breck gives her the willies. She ain’t altogther shore he’s human. With me it’s love at first site and she’s scairt if she don’t marry somebody Breck will marry her, and she says I’m the best looking prospeck she’s saw so far. So we’re heading for War Paint to git married.

  Yores trooly, Jack Sprague.’”

  “Aw, don’t take it like that,” says Bill as I give a maddened howl and impulsively commenced to rip up all the saplings in rech. “You’ve saved his life and brung him happiness!”

  “And what have I brung me?” I yelled, tearing the limbs off a oak in a effort to relieve my feelings. “Culture on Bear Creek is shot to hell and my honest love has been betrayed! Bill Glanton, the next ranny you chase up into the Humbolts to commit sooicide he don’t have to worry about gittin bumped off — I attends to it myself, personal!”

  * * *

  TEXAS JOHN ALDEN; OR, A RING-TAILED TORNADO

  First published in Masked Rider Western, May 1944

  I HEAR the citizens of War Whoop has organized theirselves into a committee of public safety which they says is to pertect the town agen
me, Breckinridge Elkins. Sech doings as that irritates me. You’d think I was a public menace or something.

  I’m purty dern tired of their slanders. I didn’t tear down their cussed jail; the buffalo-hunters done it. How could I when I was in it at the time?

  As for the Silver Boot saloon and dance hall, it wouldn’t of got shot up if the owner had showed any sense. It was Ace Middleton’s own fault he got his hind laig busted in three places, and if the city marshal had been tending to his own business instead of persecuting a pore, helpless stranger, he wouldn’t of got the seat of his britches full of buckshot.

  Folks which says I went to War Whoop a-purpose to wreck the town, is liars. I never had no idea at first of going there at all. It’s off the railroad and infested with tinhorn gamblers and buffalo-hunters and sech-like varmints, and no place for a trail-driver.

  My visit to this lair of vice come about like this: I’d rode p’int on a herd of longhorns clean from the lower Pecos to Goshen, where the railroad was. And I stayed there after the trail-boss and the other boys headed south, to spark the belle of the town, Betty Wilkinson, which gal was as purty as a brand- new bowie knife. She seemed to like me middling tolerable, but I had rivals, notably a snub-nosed Arizona waddy by the name of Bizz Ridgeway.

  This varmint’s persistence was so plumb aggravating that I come in on him sudden-like one morning in the back room of the Spanish Mustang, in Goshen, and I says:

  “Lissen here, you sand-burr in the pants of progress, I’m a peaceable man, generous and retirin’ to a fault. But I’m reachin’ the limit of my endurance. Ain’t they no gals in Arizona, that you got to come pesterin’ mine? Whyn’t yuh go on back home where you belong anyhow? I’m askin’ yuh like a gent to keep away from Betty Wilkinson before somethin’ onpleasant is forced to happen to yuh.”

  He kind of r’ared up, and says: “I ain’t the only gent which is sparkin’ Betty. Why don’t you make war-talk to Rudwell Shapley, Jr.?”

  “He ain’t nothin’ but a puddin’-headed tenderfoot,” I responded coldly. “I don’t consider him in no serious light. A gal with as much sense as Betty wouldn’t pay him no mind. But you got a slick tongue and might snake yore way ahead of me. So I’m tellin’ you—”

  He started to git up in a hurry, and I reached for my bowie, but then he sunk back down in his chair and to my amazement he busted into tears.

  “What in thunder’s the matter with you?” I demanded, shocked.

  “Woe is me!” moaned he. “Yuh’re right, Breck. I got no business hangin’ around Betty. But I didn’t know she was yore gal. I ain’t got no matrimonial intentions onto her. I’m jest kind of consolin’ myself with her company, whilst bein’ parted by crooel Fate from my own true love.”

  “Hey,” I says, pricking up my ears and uncocking my pistol. “You ain’t in love with Betty? You got another gal?”

  “A pitcher of divine beauty!” vowed he, wiping his eyes on my bandanner. “Gloria La Venner, which sings in the Silver Boot, over to War Whoop. We was to wed—”

  Here his emotions overcome him and he sobbed loudly.

  “But Fate interfered,” he moaned. “I was banished from War Whoop, never to return. In a thoughtless moment I kind of pushed a bartender with a clawhammer, and he had a stroke of apperplexity or somethin’ and died, and they blamed me. I was forced to flee without tellin’ my true love where I was goin’.

  “I ain’t dared to go back because them folks over there is so prejudiced agen’ me they threatens to arrest me on sight. My true love is eatin’ her heart out, waitin’ for me to come and claim her as my bride, whilst I lives here in exile!”

  Bizz then wept bitterly on my shoulder till I throwed him off in some embarrassment.

  “Whyn’t yuh write her a letter, yuh dad-blamed fool?” I ast.

  “I can’t write, nor read, neither,” he said. “And I don’t trust nobody to send word to her by. She’s so beautiful, the critter I’d send would probably fall in love with her hisself, the lowdown polecat!” Suddenly he grabbed my hand with both of his’n, and said, “Breck, you got a honest face, and I never did believe all they say about you, anyway. Whyn’t you go and tell her?”

  “I’ll do better’n that if it’ll keep you away from Betty,” I says. “I’ll bring this gal over here to Goshen.”

  “Yuh’re a gent!” says he, wringing my hand. “I wouldn’t entrust nobody else with sech a sacred mission. Jest go to the Silver Boot and tell Ace Middleton you want to see Gloria La Venner alone.”

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll rent a buckboard to bring her back in.”

  “I’ll be countin’ the hours till yuh heaves over the horizen with my true love!” declaimed he, reaching for the whiskey bottle.

  So I hustled out, and who should I run into but that pore sapified shrimp of a Rudwell Shapley Joonyer in his monkey jacket and tight riding pants and varnished English boots. We like to had a collision as I barged through the swinging doors and he squeaked and staggered back and hollered: “Don’t shoot!”

  “Who said anything about shootin’?” I ast irritably, and he kind of got his color back and looked me over like I was a sideshow or something, like he always done.

  “Your home,” says he, “is a long way from here, is it not, Mister Elkins?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I live on Wolf Mountain, ‘way down near whar the Pecos runs into the Rio Grande.”

  “Indeed!” he says kind of hopefully. “I suppose you’ll be returning soon?”

  “Naw, I ain’t,” I says. “I’ll probably stay here all fall.”

  “Oh!” says he dejectedly, and went off looking like somebody had kicked him in the pants. I wondered why he should git so down-in-the-mouth jest because I warn’t goin’ home. But them tenderfoots ain’t got no sense and they ain’t no use wasting time trying to figger out why they does things, because they don’t generally know theirselves.

  For instance, why should a object like Rudwell Shapley Jr. come to Goshen, I want to know? I ast him once p’int blank and he says it was a primitive urge so see life in the raw, whatever that means. I thought maybe he was talking about grub, but the cook at the Laramie Restaurant said he takes his beefsteaks well done like the rest of us.

  Well, anyway, I got onto my hoss Cap’n Kidd and pulled for War Whoop which laid some miles west of Goshen. I warn’t wasting no time, because the quicker I got Gloria La Venner to Goshen, the quicker I’d have a clear field with Betty. Of course it would of been easier and quicker jest to shoot Bizz, but I didn’t know how Betty’d take it. Women is funny that way.

  I figgered to eat dinner at the Half-Way House, a tavern which stood on the prairie about half-way betwix Goshen and War Whoop, but as I approached it I met a most pecooliar-looking object heading east.

  I presently recognized it as a cowboy name Tump Garrison, and he looked like he’d been through a sorghum mill. His hat brim was pulled loose from the crown and hung around his neck like a collar, his clothes hung in rags. His face was skint all over, and one ear showed signs of having been chawed on long and earnestly.

  “Where was the tornado?” I ast, pulling up.

  He give me a suspicious look out of the eye he could still see with.

  “Oh, it’s you Breck,” he says then. “My brains is so addled, I didn’t recognize you at first. In fact,” says he, tenderly caressing a lump on his head the size of a turkey aig, “It’s jest a few minutes ago that I managed to remember my own name.”

  “What happened?” I ast with interest.

  “I ain’t shore,” says he, spitting out three or four loose tushes. “Leastways I ain’t shore jest what happened after that there table laig was shattered over my head. Things is a little foggy after that. But up to that time my memory is flawless.

  “Briefly, Breck,” says he, rising in his stirrups to rub his pants where they was the print of a boot heel, “I diskivered that I warn’t welcome at the Half-Way House, and big as you be, I advises yuh to avoid it like yuh would the yaller j’in
dus.”

  “It’s a public tavern,” I says.

  “It was,” says he, working his right laig to see if it was still in j’int. “It was till Moose Harrison, the buffalo-hunter, arrove there to hold a private celebration of his own. He don’t like cattle nor them which handles ‘em. He told me so hisself, jest before he hit me with the bung-starter.

  “He said he warn’t aimin’ to be pestered by no dern Texas cattle-pushers whilst he’s enjoyin’ a little relaxation. It was jest after issuin’ this statement that he throwed me through the roulette wheel.”

  “You ain’t from Texas,” I said. “Yuh’re from the Nations.”

  “That’s what I told him whilst he was doin’ a war-dance on my brisket,” says Tump. “But he said he was too broadminded to bother with technicalities. Anyway, he says cowboys was the plague of the range, irregardless of where they come from.”

  “Oh, he did, did he?” I says irritably. “Well, I ain’t huntin’ trouble. I’m on a errand of mercy. But he better not shoot off his big mouth to me. I eats my dinner at the Half-Way House, regardless of all the buffler-hunters north of the Cimarron.”

  “I’d give a dollar to see the fun,” says Tump. “But my other eye is closin’ fast and I got to git amongst friends.”

  So he pulled for Goshen and I rode on to the Half-Way House, where I seen a big bay hoss tied to the hitch-rack. I watered Cap’n Kidd and went in. “Hssss!” the bartender says. “Git out as quick as yuh can! Moose Harrison’s asleep in the back room!”

  “I’m hongry,” I responded, setting down at a table which stood nigh the bar. “Bring me a steak with pertaters and onions and a quart of coffee and a can of cling peaches. And whilst the stuff’s cookin’ gimme nine or ten bottles of beer to wash the dust out of my gullet.”

  “Lissen!” says the barkeep. “Reflect and consider. Yuh’re young and life is sweet. Don’t yuh know that Moose Harrison is pizen to anything that looks like a cowpuncher? When he’s on a whiskey-tear, as at present, he’s more painter than human. He’s kilt more men—”